Move over, Dalek

We missed Doctor Who this weekend. We were too busy living it!

I'm rather alarmed to realise that it has been four whole years since my mother last received a Dalek birthday cake, but this year has surpassed all previous attempts. The idea is that, should the Daleks be considering yet another invasion of Earth, they will see us consuming their life-like effigies without mercy and get on the first bus back to Skaro. Also, my Mum really loves Daleks.

Behold the original Dalek Cake made by my sister back in 2007.

Dalek Cake, 2007 (A terrifying brown Dalek)

Behold the Extermicake I made back in 2008.  

Extermicake 2008 (Another terrifying
brown Dalek)

I couldn't remember it was so long ago. I thought nephew Alex would have remember the two Dalek cakes, and whilst they are undoubtedly etched into his nightmares, he was only two on the last encounter.

Mum's birthday isn't for another few weeks, but since my sister, Alex and baby Sophie were coming for the weekend, Stephen and I set about making a Dalek cake so we could celebrate the birthday while we were almost all together.

Behold, Extermicake 2012:

Extermicake 2012 (A truly horrifying, slightly lopsided, brown Dalek, with terrified on-lookers)

The Dalek leans in a plaintive fashion.

Stephen and I made a cake from a made-up recipe, a bit like this one, only without the baking powder, with added instant coffee and about half the sugar was Muscovado. For the icing, I recalled how a previous fudge-making expedition had gone disastrously wrong and never truly set, so I merely repeated the mistakes I made that time to produce a kind of fudgey plaster. The plunger (technical term in Dalekology) was produced by firing a cook's blow torch at the top of a marshmallow before stabbing a chocolate finger into it.

I can't tell you how to make it stand up straight or be Dalek-shaped because we achieved neither of these objectives.

Right, I hope you paid attention to all that or how are you going to make one yourself?

See the Flickr Dalek Cake Group for more Dalek cakes - some are even better than ours! Some, however, are worse.

Baby Sophie was awake much more than when I first met her. She's a very happy baby and has begun to smile a little. I will put some photos of her up on my Flickr stream once I have organised myself.